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It is widely believed that future parallel machines will be build as hybrid clusters of workstations, consisting of both uniprocessor and shared memory multiprocessor nodes. The platform's high overall performance, reasonable cost and attractive range of performance levels (which meet a variety of different computing needs) will make it the basis of future computing environments. The hybrid nature of such a system, however, results in an interesting and challenging set of research problems. Additional problems are introduced when the individual nodes are non-dedicated to parallel jobs. In our project we will investigate these issues on various hybrid parallel computing platforms connected with various off-the shelf high-performance networks, such as the scalable Coherent Interface (SCI). We study high performance communication and the hardware-software interface of modern interconnects (e.g. SCI, VIA). We also investigate the impact of new network technologies on programming models and parallel applications. We would like to express our gratitude to our corporate sponsors, which provided most of the equipment we work with. Without them, we would not be able to do Scintilla research. In particular, we would like to thank SUN Microsystems, Dolphin Interconnects and Intel for Workstations and network adapters, and Microsoft for Operating Sytems and develpment software. |
Maximilian Ibel
ibel@cs.ucsb.edu
Department of Computer Science
University of California at Santa Barbara
(805) 893 8981